August 16, 2010

No More Testing....

After a few weeks of 'testing' and a few years taking a break from writing in this form, it is time to get back up and running here. The goal here is to have a space to work out ideas around entrepreneurship, especially related to high innovation cycle and social enterprising businesses, and to talk about organizational and investment issues and strategies. Since my entrepreneurial background is around the areas of asset management and more traditional entrepreneurship, real estate, restaurants, and the like, this is a space to air out some thoughts on these newer forms of investing as I dive into them. I have made a few seed/ angel investments and been heavily involved in start-ups and advising for the last few years. This has given me just enough experience to be dangerous and just enough success to have the taste of blood in my mouth.

Traditional investing in the more established and liquid asset markets has become too over run with investors, too removed from the operations of the underlying asset, and too uncertain on the regulator side of the equation over the last few years. To be fair and accurate, it has become kind of boring. The operational side of putting ideas in action and executing is a lot more sexy these days.

We started adding to the start-up investing side of the portfolio and digging into more operational roles and advising about five years ago. I wish I could saythis has led to great success, but we are batting around 50/50 to date and have a few scars to show from our experiences. Since we obviously have a long way to go with this type of investing, I thought I would use this space to air out things we are learning from, things I am excited about, mistakes we have made, things our investments are struggling with, etc…

Also to be upfront, I hope this space welcomes a way to be introduced to other entrepreneurs, especially in the Southeast part of the US, so I can find other investment opportunities and new businesses to learn from and develop relationships with. Over the next few weeks, we will be adding more functionality to The Southerner Group website to help with this goal. This will give you a way to submit ideas and business models you are working on and looking for investment or advising.

I am not trying to create another time suck or put another thing on my plate that doesn't need to be there with this blog. My goal is too post good thoughts and interesting observation once or twice a week on average. So keep the bar low, as to make sure you get over it, then raise the bar.

2 Comments

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